Ghost Riders (A Dark MC Romance)

Church

Jason didn’t move right away. The napkin sat there, damp and sagging, the shape of the key pressed through it.

Down the bar two prospects hunched over a phone, Victor’s eulogy playing back tinny and small, and Victor himself was halfway to the hallway, shoulders loose, bourbon in his walk. Six steps. Seven. Jason counted them off and slid his hand along the wood, slow, no hurry in it.

He shifted on the stool. The napkin came up with his palm, the brass came with the napkin, and by the time his hand reached his thigh the key was buried in his pocket. It was warm. That was the part he hadn’t expected; the metal still held Cutter’s hand in it.

“He taught you on a Sportster.” Jason’s jaw set hard enough to ache. Inside his pocket, his knuckles stayed clamped around the warm brass, the edge biting into his palm. Perez had drifted over from the photo wall, eyes red-rimmed, an untouched beer sweating in his fist. Perez’s gaze flicked toward the hallway where Victor had gone, quick and nervous, checking the empty doorway before leaning in. “Out behind the old shop,” Perez murmured, voice rough. “Marcus ran alongside you a quarter mile, hand locked to the seat, wouldn’t let go till you were screaming at him. Then you ate gravel, and he hauled you right back onto the pegs before you could cry. Said a man who waits an hour never gets back on.” Jason didn’t loosen his grip on the key. “He said that about a lot of things.” “He was the best of us, Jase.” Perez glanced back at the hallway again, keeping his voice under the drone of the jukebox. “Don’t let anyone tell you different.”

The hallway door swung and Victor came back through it, and the room adjusted around him the way rooms did now: prospects straightening, the phone going dark, somebody turning the music down nobody had asked them to touch.

Victor’s eyes went over the bar. The wood, the glasses, the empty space where a napkin had been.

“Church,” he said. “Ten minutes.”

Perez nodded and moved off. Jason stayed where he was, the key sitting heavy against his leg.

Victor didn’t look away. “Don’t be late, son. Everybody’s got an opinion about you today.“The back room smelled like old smoke and gun oil, and nothing in it had changed except who sat where. Slab-oak table, scarred to hell. The framed colors of dead brothers hung on the far wall in two rows. A plastic basket by the door for phones, and painted above the frame in his father’s hand: WHAT IS SAID HERE STAYS HERE.

Jason dropped his phone in the basket and stayed standing by the door.

Victor sat in Marcus’s chair with the gavel under his palm, like he’d grown up holding it.

“Church is open,” Victor said.

Cutter took the foot of the table, Sergeant-at-Arms, boots planted. Perez, Eddie, the Road Captain, the Treasurer, all of them in rank, all of them watching the head of the table instead of each other.

“Barstow complaint first. Their Road Captain says we ran product through Needles without a courtesy call.”

“We didn’t,” Eddie said.

“I know we didn’t. I want it on the record that we didn’t; then when they say it again, I can say I said it here.” Victor tapped the gavel once. “Prospect vote. Tomas. Six months, no complaints, took a beating in Fallon and didn’t open his mouth.”

“He talks too much sober,” the Road Captain said.

“Then we’ll keep him busy.” Hands went up around the table. “Passed. Gun run moves to Thursday, pre-dawn, two chase cars. Nobody rides dirty, nobody rides alone. A club that moves clean sleeps clean.”

Jason knew the shape of that line. His father used to say it over a plate of eggs.

Victor set the gavel down and looked up the table, straight at the door.

“Last item. Jason De’Leon. Three years at Ely, no cooperation, no statements, nothing… and he came home. I’m moving we reinstate him full-patch, good standing, no probation, no prospect time.” Victor’s hand was already in the air. “I’m steward of this chair until the club says different, and isn’t this what Marcus would’ve wanted?”

Perez’s hand went up fast. Then Eddie, the Treasurer, the Road Captain.

Cutter’s hand stayed flat on the oak. The room went still enough to hear the fridge hum through the wall. The old man lifted it slow, inch by inch, like the arm cost him something, and he never once looked at Victor while he did it. He looked at Jason, and held it the whole way up.

“Unanimous,” Victor said. He turned his head toward the locked cabinet in the corner. “Open it.“The Treasurer worked the lock and brought the cut out folded, and when he laid it on the oak the leather didn’t give at all; three years in a cabinet had turned it stiff as board. All the patches were there. Bottom rocker, Nevada. Marcus’s hand-stitching along the inside seam where he’d closed a tear himself rather than pay somebody to do it.

Jason came to the table.

“Hands,” Victor said.

They went down one at a time, flat on the leather, Victor’s first.

“A man’s colors are his word made out of cowhide.” He said it slow, with the pause in the middle, the exact place Marcus used to put the pause. “You wear them, you are them.” Jason pressed his thumb hard into the underside edge of the table, his breath held tight behind his ribs. He kept his face where it was. The oath was his father’s. He’d watched Marcus write it at the kitchen table with a pen that kept dying.

Perez’s hand came next, shaking a little. “What you carry, we carry.”

“What we carry, nobody carries alone,” Eddie said.

The Road Captain went, then the Treasurer, each line coming plain and unhurried. Perez’s eyes were wet and he didn’t bother hiding it.

Jason’s eyes tracked Cutter’s hand coming down, the slowest of them all, big and spotted, landing last and square on the center patch. “And the road forgets nothing.”

Quiet. The fridge hummed through the wall.

“Road name?” The Road Captain looked around the table. “Table gives it.”

Victor opened his mouth. Cutter beat him to it.

“Ghost.” The old man didn’t look up from the leather. “Short for little ghost rider. That’s what Marcus called him. Kid was ten, used to slip out the back of the shop and you’d hunt an hour for him, then he’d turn up on the tank of his old man’s bike like he’d never moved.”

Jason’s throat worked.

“Ghost,” Perez said, and the word went around the table, low, six times over.

Victor’s mouth moved into something like a smile. “Ghost it is. Fits him.”

“It fit him first,” Cutter said.

Victor let that sit a second too long. Then he picked up the gavel and brought it down once, hard.

“Church is closed. Everybody out. Thursday, pre-dawn. Don’t be stupid before then.”

Chairs scraped. Boots moved. Eddie clapped Jason’s shoulder on the way past and said nothing, which was the kindest thing anybody had managed all day.

Jason didn’t move, both hands around the stiff old leather. It smelled like his father.

Cutter went through the door without a word, and Jason followed him into the hallway.The hallway was narrow and smelled like beer and old carpet. Cutter stood against the wall with his thumbs hooked in his belt and let the rest of them file past, Eddie first, then the money man and the one who ran the runs, boots thudding off toward the bar until the sound thinned out and there was nobody left but the two of them.

Jason held the folded cut against his chest.

“You hear it?” Cutter said.

“Hear what?”

“The oath.” The old man’s jaw worked. “Word for word, right down to where he breathes.”

“He’s been in this club twenty years. He’d know it.”

“He’s performing your father, not honoring him.” Cutter glanced down the hall, then back. “Marcus sat up half a night at his kitchen table writing that oath. I watched him cross out three versions before he landed on the one he liked. Now Victor says it like he owns it.”

Jason’s grip shifted on the leather. “And what am I supposed to do with that?”

“Nothing. Yet.” Cutter’s voice dropped. “Just don’t let a man say your daddy’s words at you and call it family. That’s all I’m asking, son.”

“Cutter - ”

The door behind them opened, and Jason stopped talking.

Victor came through slow, gavel gone, bourbon still riding him. He didn’t ask what they’d been saying. That was the thing about Victor; he never asked.

“There he is.” Victor’s hand landed on Jason’s shoulder, warm and heavy. “Full patch, standing in my hallway, holding it like a church bulletin. Put it on, son.”

“Thought I’d wait till - ”

“Till what? Till somebody gives you permission?” Victor laughed, and it was a nice laugh, that was the worst part. He took the cut out of Jason’s hands and shook it open. “Arms.”

Jason put his arms in.

The leather was stiff and cold through his shirt and it sat on him wrong, three years of cabinet in the shoulders. Victor came around front. He smoothed the lapels with both palms, pressed a thumb over the center patch, then took the collar in his fingers and straightened it, one side, then the other, until it sat square.

Cutter didn’t move. Jason could feel him there, watching his face and not the cut. Jason held a beat of silence, swallowing the hot surge of rage before locking it down. Then he stood still. He let Victor’s hands work the collar flat and he didn’t pull back an inch.

“There,” Victor said. “Marcus would’ve cried.”